The Chronicle Search
by waterbringer
Summary: Running into that new girl in the hallway was an accident. That's what Kyon chooses to believe, anyway. 1st place winner of the Anime Detour Fanfiction Contest.


I can't begin to say how shocked I was when this ended up winning the contest, and I'm thrilled that people liked it. Thanks to everyone who liked it enough to vote for it!

Also, special thanks to shortestgiraffe for proofreading it on such short notice.

* * *

I probably shouldn't have been trying to study for the test the next day by reading my textbook while walking down the hallway. Truth was, I hadn't actually done any studying for it despite knowing about it for about a week now and I was leaving the materials in my desk the whole time, so I had to somehow catch up. It seemed like such a shame to let all of my lunch break to be spent on research, though. So instead I decided to try looking the material over during the transportation phase of my day. It seemed like a good way to effectively use time that is normally wasted just moving around.

At least that was my original idea. Despite how intellectual people look if they're walking while their nose is in a book, it turns out they have no idea where they're going, which is detrimental to the whole process. In reality, they would end up knocking into anyone unlucky enough to be in front of them (except Nagato, probably, but she doesn't count). Kind of like what happened to me just now, seeing how I walked smack into an underclassman and made us both drop what we were carrying.

"I'm so sorry! I wasn't paying attention, and, oh, I'm so embarrassed..."

The girl shook light brown hair away from her face and was already picking up my dropped textbook off the ground while apparently channeling Asahina in the cute, apologetic department. The blush spreading across her face only added to the cuteness factor.

"No, it's my fault. I wasn't watching where I was going." The really embarrassing part was that I had barely gotten through the first few pages of the assignment before the inevitable collision. Leaning down, I reached to pick up what she had dropped and stopped and starred for a moment. For some reason, she had been carrying a large, white stuffed animal of some kind with long ears, one of which had an earring on it, stubby arms and closed eyes. If it was from a cartoon, it wasn't one I recognized. Seemed odd for a high school student to have something like this in the middle of school, but if the weirdest thing to happen in a day was running into a classmate who liked stuffed animals, then I could count myself lucky.

"Here you go," I said, handing over whatever it was. Looking grateful, the girl took it back, tucked it under an arm and began to hold out my book to me.

"Hey, I was wondering. What grade are yo- AHH!" I was cut off by something - or someone - suddenly grabbing the collar of my shirt and yanking it back. Somehow, Haruhi had managed to appear out of nowhere. It not like anyone else did this kind of crap to me.

"Hey, Kyon! What are you doing wasting time? We've got club business to do today!"

Since when? I'm busy!

Haruhi looked over at the girl, who looked especially nervous at seeing the show we were putting on. Maybe she was a new student who wasn't yet desensitized to these antics.

Haruhi sniffed and began to drag me away. "Come on. We've got work to do!"

The girl just stood there, looking too stunned to do anything. Oh yeah, she's new.

* * *

I probably should have realized something was up. I mean, no one ever just accidentally runs into a beautiful girl, apologizes and then goes on with their life. Usually the boy and girl begin a whirlwind romance, and then a rival shows up and a good deal of comedy hijinks until the end of the school year before they make the relationship official. Of course, that's just on television, but it's not as though my life makes any kind of sense. Judging it by the standards of manufactured entertainment should mean that statistically it would have to be right occasionally. A stopped watch is right twice a day and all that.

Somehow, I had found myself standing in the clubroom after-hours with the girl I had run into earlier that day, but we weren't alone. Oh no, the room was just about filled to capacity with-

You know what, I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's what happened.

After the fateful encounter in the hallway the day proceeded normally, despite my efforts to try finding the girl again to get my book back. Though Haruhi had dragged me away claiming we had work to do, she ended up just having me do busywork in the clubroom, almost as though she didn't actually have anything for me to do. Figures. After that, I went to class, Haruhi kicked me around, I went to the SOS "meeting" to be bossed around some more, the day ended, and we all left. You know, the usual.

Except right after Haruhi left, the rest, namely Koizumi, Asahina and Nagato, turned around and went right back inside, with me naturally following behind. So the usual.

But once we got back to the clubroom, several people were already there. Two were adults I had never seen before. One of them had black hair, red eyes and the kind of demeanor that screamed "I'm cooler than you will ever be and I don't even know it" despite holding the plushie from earlier that day. The other was blond and for some reason grated on my nerves despite not having said a word yet. Both were too tall for their own good. The other two people in the room were teenagers, both of them in school uniforms, one of them a boy about my age and one of whom was the girl I'd run into earlier.

Of course she's involved in some weirdness. There's no one normal in my life.

This also mark the point in time that the clubroom held more people than ever before, at least for as long as the SOS had been around. So it was kinda cramped.

"Well, now that we are all here, should we get started? You're Kyon, correct?" Blondie asked with a smile on his face. Yeah, I didn't like him.

"Whoa, hold it. What's going on now?" I waved an arm in the air. "Who are you guys?"

The man set his hand on his chest. "My name is Fai. The two over there-" he motioned toward the teenagers "- are Syaoran and Sakura."

The boy – Syaoran – inclined his head while Sakura smiled brightly and came forward, holding my textbook from earlier out to me. "I'm sorry. I haven't been able to give this back to you all day. I hope you weren't inconvenienced..."

"It's fine. No harm done." I grinned, taking it back. She was just so cute.

"And this one here-" Fai gestured toward the serious-looking adult. "-is Kuro-tan."

"It's Kurogane, dammit! Quit it with the nicknames!"

Man, do I feel his pain. Fai didn't seem the least bit alarmed by the outburst or the fact that Kurogane looked like he wanted to chuck him out the window. Must be normal for them. That's just sad.

"Don't forget about me!" The stuffed animal Kurogane was holding suddenly jumped out of his arms and flat out bounced toward me before getting right in my face. If anyone asks, I did not scramble away in an undignified manner. Not at all.

"W- what are you? And why is the stuffed animal talking?" Some distant part of my brain thought that was impolite, but my conscious mind was too busy freaking out to care, though I did manage to catch it in my hands on nothing but instinct.

"I'm not stuffed anything! I'm Mokona!"

"...and that's your name or your species?"

"Both! Mokona is Mokona!"

Of course you are.

"Well, now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business." Koizumi cut in on my minor mental breakdown, smiling like normal. Judging by everyone's lack of reaction to the stuffed animal turned magical girl mascot, everyone knew but me. Typical.

"Wait, names are all well and good, but I still don't know what you all are doing here. Who are you all?"

Syaoran took the opportunity to step forward. "Basically, we're travelers. From a different country than this one and we're looking for something that landed here. We only just arrived this morning. "

"So, what, you all just came in from China or something?"

"What?"

"At six oh two this morning, an unknown object of compressed data and energy appeared within an eighty five meter radius of our current location through a rip in transdimentional space." Nagato's monotone echoed in the room. "Approximately seven minutes after this event, a second rip event occurred by way of the entity known as 'Mokona Modoki' deposited four humans within the designated radius."

"Transdimentional...wait, you guys said country..."

"The language translation has .2% error rate. By definition, 'country' refers to a dimensional plane."

I don't have a good feeling about where this is going. "So you're all from another dimension?"

Unfortunately, no one in the room responded in the negative. "Yes." "That's it!" "Correct." "Catching on, kid." "Well, actually most of us are from all different dimensions..."

I'm in a room full of sliders. Great. Just beautiful.

Sakura tilted her head. "What are sliders?"

"Sliders, travelers, whatever, you can't be here! Hang on, Haruhi hasn't tried to recruit you yet has she?" They know about Haruhi, right? With any luck, she'll try to collect one of them, probably as a new _new_ mysterious exchange student.

Kurogane snorted. "You mean that girl half my size that we're supposed to avoid like the plague? Nope, haven't seen her at all." Fai and Syaoran shook their heads while Sakura looked at the ground.

"I'm sorry. I thought I could keep a low profile, but I was seen anyway."

At my expression, Koizumi filled in the gaps. "I ran into them before anyone was the wiser. The Organization has since become involved."

That explained the uniforms that came from out of nowhere.

Syaoran set his hand on a still depressed Sakura's shoulder. "It's alright. It was an accident and nothing bad happened. There's no harm done."

Sakura immediately brightened. "Thanks." As though just noticing how close they were to each other, their faces turn red and they look away.

Crud. All the nice, not crazy girls are taken. Syaoran, you're a lucky man.

"Actually, that could have helped us." Koizumi broke in. "If Haruhi is adverse to the idea of new club members or any of you in particular, than the likelihood of any of you getting recruited drops dramatically."

Hey, you don't have to be so on the nose about it.

"What exactly does happen if Haruhi does decide to kidnap of these guys to be in the club?"

"Two undesirable scenarios have a high chance of occurring." Nagato interrupted. "One, the selected individual would be unable to leave this dimension as long as Haruhi wishes them to remain. However, due to my inability to fully examine the method of transportation, I cannot give an accurate reading as to how likely the scenario is."

Hey, that's a good question. How did you guys get here anyway?

"That's me!" Mokona's hand-claw-whatever waved in the air. "I get everyone wherever we need to go. It's one my super special talents!"

Figures. Wait, so _Nagato_ can't figure you out? That's a neat trick.

"But I don't think Suzumiya can stop us from leaving if we really wanted to." Mokona looked contemplative. As much as he can, anyway, while looking like a toy. "She shouldn't be able to override my magic, but something bad would happen if she tried."

You're _stronger_ than Haruhi? Somehow, I find that hard to believe. Still, the idea is kind of funny, while being inherently terrifying.

"The other scenario," Nagato talked as though no one interrupted. "Is that when they leave, Haruhi will take note and pursue the event, same as any potentially abnormal situation."

"So, what are you all waiting for?" I turned toward toward the new group. "You guys need to get out of here as soon as you can. Nothing good is going to happen if you get entangled in all of this."

"The risks have been explained to us," Syaoran replied. "But we can't leave yet. Not without the feather."

A feather?

"The object is within the school grounds, but all attempts to track it to a more defined location have so far been fruitless. The energy signature is well hidden and warped," said Nagato.

"Mokona hasn't been able to sense it at all." Mokona looked dejected.

"So I take it it would also be bad if Haruhi ran across this thing?"

Asahina frantically spoke up for the first time. "Yes! It's classified information while still being classified information! And it's capable of creating a classified information!"

...we're not in another time loop, are we?

"Not yet. None of us have any way of telling what could happened if Haruhi does run across the feather. From the accounts, it can be...unpredictable." Koizumi said.

"Sakura and I tried to find it during the day since we could easily blend in." Syaoran said. "But it got too dangerous, so we had to wait until now when everyone was gone."

...let me guess. We need to find a feather within the school so people from another dimension can leave before our ever-so-predictable-yet-unpredictable leader does something crazy.

"It's also bad for anyone else to run across the feather if they don't know what they're doing." Fai cut in.

Great. Just great. So, now we're going on a scavenger hunt at school in the dead of night, aren't we?

"Basically."

Stop smiling like that. It gets on my nerves.

"Alright." Koizumi clapped his hands together. "I say we split off into teams so that each has a cellphone with them-" He raised his mobile. "-and someone who can fight if worse comes to worse. So, let's pair off and get going."

Who put you in charge?

Everyone else got the gist, though. A few murmurs bounce around the room while I mainly look on stupidly until we came away with Asahina nervously beside Syaoran**,** Nagato standing next to Sakura, who was also holding the cream puff, and Kurogane ignoring Koizumi as they walk out of the room. I'd try to ignore him too. But wait, that means...

"Lets start looking around downstairs then, shall we?"

...damn it.

* * *

Well, I'm ready to give up.

I probably should have reached this point earlier. Probably when Koizumi 2.0 told me that the feather could be anywhere, and I do mean _anywhere_, such as in a desk, under the floorboards, in someone's locker or stuck in the plumbing. One would think it would be out in the open, but apparently that would be cheating. And would make sense. Not helping my mood was the conversation from earlier.

"_Don't you guys have any way of tracking this kind of thing down? Why can't we just use that?"_

_Fai hummed contemplatively. "Mokona is usually the one to find feathers on the worlds that we go to. But," he shrugged, "It has to be actively doing something for him to be able to sense it. If there was safe way to do that, we would go for it but-"_

"_That's exactly what we're trying to avoid. Right."_

"_From what I understand, Nagato is in the same position."_

Still, that was early in the evening, and there's nothing like the risk of an undefinable threat to keep you going on a task.

And it did seem as though we had looked through most of the school. Ripped it apart, really. At some point, Koizumi and Kurogane had dug through every bowl and square inch of fridge in the cafeteria, Nagato, Sakura and Mokona had flipped through every book in the library, and Syaoran and Asahina had probably left the sports equipment a lot cleaner than it was before. Fai and I somehow got designated with the task of rummaging in desks, which was mostly carried out by him. As though it's not bad enough we're trespassing on school grounds; let's ignore the concept of privacy as well. I'm the one who needs to keep associating with these people anyway.

Despite our efforts, though, the fact of the matter was that it was approaching five am, no one had found anything out of the ordinary (for once), and Fai was humming. Incessantly. Of what I have no idea. Probably something from another dimension, but no one likes to listen to someone else hum, no matter how otherworldly it may be.

"Nothing here either," Fai said, smiling while closing yet another drawer to yet another teachers desk that we were rooting through (oh, also no one likes people who can still be cheerful in the dead of night after accomplishing nothing for several hours).

Seriously, he had yet to even show any frustration all night. Are you sure everything was explained to you? Did you the exposition where the end of the world could take place, or did that just not come up in conversation?

Something must have shown on my face because Fai tilted his head at me. "Maybe we should pack it in for the night. Try this again tomorrow."

WHAT? You want us to stop now? After going through all of this, you want us to do it again tomorrow!

Fai shrugged. "Pretty soon, people are going to start arriving for the school day, right?"

Not the point.

"Besides, wouldn't it be better to do this when we are all alert and not about to fall asleep on our feet?"

You look as chipper as ever!

Fai giggled. "You're sounding more and more like Kuro-pippi."

...wow, that was bad. At least my stupid name is consistent.

As though on cue, my phone went off. It was Koizumi.

Man, was I tempted to ignore it. Alas, life and death scenarios. I answered.

"We're going to stop for now."

Of course. I'm really not equipped to handle two of you right now, so I'm going to hang up now.

"Part of the problem is we're running out of places to look."

Knew it. We're going to start causing all kinds of collateral damage by ripping up the floor next. I'm not a licensed plumber, so someone else is going to have to do that part.

"We're not quite that desperate yet, but we are going to have to figure out a new approach as soon as possible. We were hoping to keep this simple but, well..."

That's a silly idea. If something with easy, it wouldn't have anything to do with me.

"Let's all met up at the clubroom and head out. If nothing changes, we'll try this again tomorrow."

I'm not going to sleep for the rest of the week. Hanging up, Fai and I left the classroom, him still looking as awake as ever. I wanted to punch him.

"Looks like Kuro-chan and I will be playing house again. That'll be fun!"

Wait, what?

Fai chuckled. "Koizumi was nice enough to let us stay at an apartment close by. Since we knew where the feather was, there wasn't any point in looking for it and it's only polite to keep borrowed space clean."

I don't care what you say, you two practically act like you're married.

He looked surprised. I think. I wasn't thinking too clearly at this point. "You think so?"

How oblivious do you think I am?

"Hmm." Fai got quiet, leaving me alone with my thoughts, such as they were. Thoughts like what I was going to do with the last few hours before school began again.

First, head home and get a shower. I'll need a clean uniform, too. Then I could get a couple hours of sleep. Wait, wasn't there something else I... oh yeah. I could be responsible and look over the notes for the test I'd been pushing off all week. Not that it'll go well either way but with that last incident over the summer with the assignments that-

I stopped.

It was a few seconds before Fai realized I wasn't walking next to him anymore and looked at me curiously.

A cold, horrible feeling of realization went through me.

I picked up my pace, almost breaking into a run as I hurry back to the room, ignoring Fai's yells behind me.

Screeching to a halt, I threw open the door and saw Asahina and Syaoran jump at my dramatic entrance.

"Kyon, what's wrong?" Asahina asked. So maybe I looked a little frazzled, but I had an absolutely justified reason for it.

Without a word, I stalked over to the desk and picked up the textbook I'd left there the night before. Swallowing once, I steeled myself and began flipping through the pages.

Lo and behold, nestled between the pages was a large, bright white feather covered in pink markings. I didn't need to hear Asahina's gasp or Syaoran's exclamation.

I fell to my knees in despair.

* * *

An entire night of searching and worrying, and Sakura or I had it the entire time.

No one in the room was yelling at me over it (and no one would consider raising their voice at someone as sweet as her), though Kurogane had a few choice words that didn't translate properly. At least someone besides me is a grouch this morning. We were all kind of at a loss, though.

"I don't get it." Sakura was befuddled. Cutely so. "How did I forget to look there?"

Nagato took the book out of my hands and set it on the center of the desk next to the newly-liberated feather before placing her palm over the cover and closing her eyes. Mokona hummed in the background while Nagato worked for a few seconds before he let out an "Oh!"

Are either of you going to share with us?

Nagato's eyes opened. "The object was activated."

Judging by everyone's reactions, no one was expecting that.

"But I had it all day. Mokona never noticed anything." Sakura turned to the fuzz ball.

"The feather's power was used, but it was specifically directed to not being noticed. So even if we did think of its hiding place, we forgot about it." Mokona said.

It can do that?

"It can do a lot," Kurogane grumbled.

But how? And why?

"I believe it was reacting to you," Koizumi said.

What? What did I do? I'm supposed to be the normal one, right?

"Nothing. That's exactly it."

Are you trying to say something?

Koizumi waved his hands at my scowl, trying to placate me. It wasn't working. "Let me ask. You were using this-" he tapped the book's cover. "-to study for a test, correct?"

Well, yeah.

"Really?"

What kind of question is that?

"How long have you known about it? The test, I mean."

...a while.

"And how much have you actually studied?" Fai broke in.

...a little. And stop helping!

"You were just going to cram last night, weren't you?"

What did I just say?

"Let me make sure I got this," Kurogane groaned. "It, what, fed off of this kid's apathy?"

"That is correct," Nagato said. "It reflected disposition of the book's owner toward it during the time the two objects were bonded together."

I'm sorry that I was more concerned with prevented untold disaster than studying for a test. I was going to study eventually. Really.

...fine. I'll never put off studying for a test again.

"Still, it maybe it's best that it happened this way," Syaoran said.

Why? We wasted all this time and effort, went through people's stuff, and risked blowing up the world. Again. What's the upside?

"What would have happened if Kyon had cared about the test instead?"

After a moment of silence, Nagato said, "Cannot determine. Too many variables."

Mokona nodded despite not having any neck I could see. "If it was active some other way, the feather could have been doing anything or hurting anyone. Instead, all of that power was spent doing something harmless."

...maybe I'll never study again instead.

Sighing, I reached over and picked up the feather from the table and held it out toward Sakura. "This is yours, ri- Whoa!"

She didn't get a chance to say anything before the feather suddenly started to glow and suddenly disappeared into her body. After the light show was over, she floated for a moment and collapsed, leaving Syaoran to quickly catch her before she hit her head.

I just stood there, not really sure if I should apologize or something. What do you say when you accidentally magically knock out some guy's girlfriend?

"Ummm..."

"Thank you."

I blinked at Syaoran who was smiling up at me. "What did I do?"

"You took care of a very important part of her and restored it to her. A lot of people haven't been have so kind. So, thank you."

Well, what do you say to that? "Oh. No problem. It was probably just coincidence anyway."

"No." Syaoran looked me in the eye. "There's only inevitability."

That sounds like something off a fortune teller. I'm just going to keep pretending the coincidence theory. Helps me sleep at night.

"Well, that's that." Koizumi said, interrupting the moment. "We'd best get out of here before we're all caught. You can stay at the safe house until you are ready move on."

Kurogane silently allowed Syaoran to place Sakura on his back while Fai took Mokona and they all left with Koizumi in the lead, each calling out a goodbye until Nagato, Asahina and I were all that was left. With the excitement gone, Asahina collapsed into a chair while Nagato looked the same as ever. Pretty soon, she selected a book from the shelves and began reading in her usual chair. Heavily, I sat down at the desk and starred at my textbook that had caused all of my problems for the last day.

You know what, screw it. I leaned back for a nap. At least I don't have to deal with marching up the hill today.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, I didn't do very well on the test. It's a toss-up as to whether this was to the fact that I never had a chance to study for it at all, or because I had been distracted by the barely-avoided new members of the club.

Or maybe it was because I fell asleep more than once in the middle of it. Something like that. Turns out power napping isn't a good substitute for the real thing. This did not escape the notice of the great and powerful leader.

"Why're you so out of it?" Haruhi asked, frowning at me.

"Didn't sleep much."

"How come?"

"Up all night.

"Why?"

"Looking for something."

"Well, that was stupid."

Tell me about it.

I tapped my pencil on the desk in front of me. "Hey, Haruhi?'

She looked over. "Yeah?"

"Have you ever thought about…"

"Hmm?"

"…never mind, it's nothing."

"Well, then don't bring it up."

Probably best to not give her any ideas for new members. We don't need any more potential recruits dragged here.

"Kyon, you're excused from club duties for the day." Haruhi said out of nowhere.

Huh? Where's this coming from?

"Don't get used to it!" Haruhi yelled, immediately backtracking and pointing in my face. "It's just you'll be useless to me today and we're all be better off if you get rested up for tomorrow. You'll be working twice as hard to make up for this!" With that, she picked up her bag and left.

This is…weirdly considerate. For Haruhi at least. I'm not arguing though. Packing up, I left the classroom to head home.

I didn't get very far before I ran into Koizumi in the hallway. Not literally this time.

"Looks like the crisis was averted." He looked far too cheerful and awake than was fair. "The group left a little while ago. Sakura wanted me to tell you thank you and goodbye since she didn't have the chance to tell you herself."

You don't have to remind me of that stunt.

"Anyway, as long as they don't have any business here, we probably won't be seeing them again." Koizumi said.

Well, that good. Since this is the first time I've been let out of club duties, such as they are, I'm going to go home and enjoy the reprieve. I walked past Koizumi and started down the hallway.

"It was a memory." Koizumi looked over his shoulder, smiling.

What was?

"The feathers were Sakura's scattered memories. If you were curious."

I didn't ask, but okay. That's good to know.

"Do you want the details?"

No. You can tell me all about it next week or something. I have a vacation to enjoy.

"Suit yourself." Koizumi shrugged and walked away.

I wonder what's on TV at this time. Maybe there was a ballgame scheduled tonight that I could fall asleep watching.

...how _would_ memories turn into feathers, anyway?


End file.
